


water so deep, now we got to swim

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Series: while your colors bleed [5]
Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Canonical Character Death, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Introspection, Manipulative Relationship, Statutory Rape, Teacher-Student Relationship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Beth doesn't understand. She could take Bert’s money and be on the next flight out of here to freaking Fiji, if she wanted to be. But Addy doesn’t think she wants to leave at all. She thinks Beth thrives on being a big fish in this small pond. Beth doesn’t need Coach like Addy does. Addy needs Coach to get out of Sutton Grove, Addy needs Coach to transform her into what she has to be. Coach is willing to do it because she cares about Addy.(right?)There are so many things.(that don’t add up)She needs Coach’s help with.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon, Colette French/Addy Hanlon
Series: while your colors bleed [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617898
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	water so deep, now we got to swim

**Author's Note:**

> There will be one more part of this weird, niche AU collection I have found myself writing. Lied when I said the last part was the end, my bad. This particular AU collection will actually end after one more piece following this one. 
> 
> Uh, okay, yeah, assorted details of this AU going forward...Colette's daughter keeps her name from the book. Will dies pre-regionals instead of post. Addy/Beth's first kiss was the book version, a borderline sexual encounter as opposed to the sweeter, more innocent rain kiss in the series. Will's murder remains under investigation, not solved as quickly as it was in the book. 
> 
> Title is from another Herizen song.

Addy spends the night at Beth’s for real for the first time in months and if feels nicer than she was expecting to. When they break out the Rainbow Loom like they used to when they were in middle school, making bracelets and being silly, Addy feels like she can relax. Relaxation isn’t a feeling she’s been familiar with since locking eyes with Will’s corpse.

Lana passes out after dinner, cradling an empty bottle of Grey Goose. Beth and Addy tiptoe into her room and look through the clothes in her closet, another thing they used to do. As preteens, they actually used to take them and play dress-up, much to Lana’s exasperation. That’s when Bert started giving them money to go on shopping sprees. 

If it was Faith who took them to the mall, they’d actually spend the money and buy everything they wanted. If Lana took them, they’d wait until she was distracted, either leaving Beth and Addy to themselves while she took a smoke break or batting bleary eyes at younger salesman, asking them their opinions on various fancy bras. Then they’d steal most of what they wanted instead of buying it, sneaking cute keychains and costume jewelry into Beth’s oversized purse, or bringing bundles of clothes to the dressing rooms, changing into the outfits they really liked and putting their own clothes back on overtop before exiting. 

Bert always paid up if Beth pushed him to. If she twirled her chestnut hair around her finger and gave him that look that Addy knows so well, the bored, _we both know you can do better than this_ look. They never stole because they were short on cash, it was just more fun that way. Back at home, they’d swap, each trying on what the other picked out. What was Beth’s was Addy’s and what was Addy’s was Beth’s. 

That mall is closed now. It has been for two years. 

Tonight they don’t take any clothes from Lana’s closet, but they do take some bedsheets. They bring them downstairs, giggling like preschoolers, get drunk and make a pillow fort just because they can. Inside they get cozy, curling up on the gathered pillows. Addy slips her arms around Beth, spooning her. A soft, contented purr rumbles in Beth’s throat, like she’s been waiting for Addy to hold her since the day she was born. 

Lana’s silky sheets hide them from the world, attached by safety pins and held up by meticulously placed dining room and kitchen chairs. In this cushiony cocoon, they have a temporary safe haven where nothing else can touch them. Addy ghosts her lips over the nape of Beth’s neck, inhales the familiar scent of Beth’s coconut shampoo, feeling Beth relax further into her. 

“You’re my girl, Addy,” she mumbles, soft and drunken. 

“…yeah. I’m your girl,” Addy hums, letting it be true for the night. 

Tonight, they can have this. In the morning things will be different, Addy knows. In the morning, things are always different. 

* * *

Addy babysits Caitlin the next day. For real. It isn’t some excuse to be at the French household, some pretense that veils the inevitable of Coach taking off her panties. 

Today she’s here because the Frenches have some kind of meeting or dinner or whatever with Mrs. Curtis and Bert. It’s about the stadium project. Addy has no idea how Coach can act normal and pretend something like the stadium projects matters at all, when Will is dead. 

When Will has been murdered. 

“Hey, Coach, Mr. Coach,” Addy announces when she steps over the threshold. 

“Addy, hi.” Coach flashes her a strained smile and gives her a loose, one-armed hug in greeting. 

That’s the way Coach always hugs her in front of Matt French, if she dares to hug her at all. Matt French greets her with a tacit nod and busies himself with sweeping papers into his briefcase. That’s kind of weird, he’s usually friendlier. Addy supposes he must be stressed about the project, but whatever. She has bigger things to worry about. 

“Can we talk?” she asks Coach under her breath. 

“Not now,” Coach whispers, removing her arm from Addy’s shoulders. 

Addy pinches her sleeve before she can move away. “It’s important.” 

“Addy,” Coach breathes her name like a warning, steely glint in her eye, stepping back into her space bubble and lowering her voice another octave. “My husband is ten feet away. It can wait.” 

Coach shakes off her grip and Addy swallows, cowed into compliance. She pads down the hallway as the two of them get ready, going to Caitlin’s room. Caitlin stands in her crib as soon as she sees Addy, chirping a noise and reaching her small arms up. 

“Hey, you.” Addy smiles and scoops her up. “We’re gonna have fun today, huh?” 

Caitlin blinks at Addy with her big owlish eyes and grips the drawstring of Addy’s hoodie in her tiny fist. She entertains herself by pulling on it and Addy gently sways from side to side, idly comforted by the weight of the baby in her arms. Addy is strong, strong enough to hoist other athletic young women up to the sky. Caitlin weighs so little, it hardly feels like holding another person. 

It feels far more like holding a warm, squishy, bowling ball. But she is a person. A very tiny person, delicate and still so new to the world that Addy isn’t even sure if she knows. What do babies know? 

Does Caitlin understand that she is a person? Does she have the faintest clue?

Seems unlikely when she’s so fascinated by something as uninteresting as hoodie strings. So fascinated that she pops the tip of Addy’s into her mouth. Addy huffs in amusement and carries her to the living room. 

When Coach and Matt French leave, they do so barely acknowledging Addy. Matt French jerks his briefcase in a stiff, sharp motion. Coach shuts the door so hard behind her, it’s almost a slam. Addy wonders if the tension between them is about the meeting, or something else. 

Hopefully not her. There’s no way Matt French could’ve known a thing about what she and Coach do together, right? 

He didn’t know about Will. 

Will…

Caitlin crawls across the carpet and picks up a rubber ring to gnaw at it with the few teeth she does have. She only has a couple, but that’s more than Will had. That Night. 

Addy’s stomach roils with a wave of nausea. 

What does that mean for Caitlin, if Coach killed Will? If her mother is a murderer? 

The idea of it makes Addy shudder. She doesn’t want to believe that Coach killed Will. What has to be inside a person to allow them to kill another person? 

What sort of thing inside you has to be so broken it enables you to do something like that? 

To look into someone’s face and still pull the trigger, plunge in the knife, bring the bat to the head? 

Addy doesn’t want to believe that there could be something like that inside of Coach, something so dark, something so evil. Coach seems cold but Addy knows her better than that. Coach brings the best out of Addy, saves her most playful smiles for Addy alone, holds Addy’s face in her smooth, supple hands and promises Addy the whole, wide world. 

No one knows Coach like Addy does, not the other girls, especially not Beth who seems to think she knows everything. Absolutely not Matt fucking French, who would never treat Coach the way he does if he knew her half as well as Addy does. He wouldn’t be so short with her over stupid things. He wouldn’t underestimate her passion, the fire that blazes in her soul veiled beneath her frosty exterior. He wouldn’t undermine her barbwire wit or abandon her for weeks at a time on those surely boring business trips. 

(even though Addy is more than happy to fill in while he’s gone) 

The Coach Addy knows— the one who is driven but kind, the one who is clever and sure, the one who can be as lighthearted as a nymph and warm as beach sand between your toes if you’d only just let her— the Coach who loves Addy, would never kill Will. 

(wouldn’t she?) 

She was over their relationship, but she still cared about him. More than that, she wouldn’t— couldn’t —do a thing like that to Caitlin, right? 

(right?) 

Coach had a horrible relationship with her own mother. She wouldn’t do something that could jeopardize her relationship with Caitlin, that could land her in jail and separate them forever.

 _No, that’s why she called you,_ comes a thought in Beth's voice.

Addy bites her lip. If Coach did kill Will, she isn’t actually the person Addy thought she was at all. But she can’t deny that what she wants to believe and what she knows to be true might not actually add up…

Will’s death is being treated as a homicide. Fact. 

Coach’s hair was wet when Addy arrived at the scene. Fact. 

Coach wiped down just about everything in Will’s apartment. Fact. 

(love is not enough and at her very core, Addy is undeniably terrified of Coach. Fact, fact, fucking fact) 

* * *

Addy is a zombie at cheer practice and she hates herself for it. She needs to get her shit together. If can’t get her shit together, if she can’t perform at her best, then everything will have been for nothing. 

All the effort, all the strife, all the emotion. None of it will matter at all if she can’t perform at her best, if she can’t be the athlete who can make the scouts stop and look. If she can’t be the warrior Coach promises she is. 

She can’t think about any of the complications here, any of the distractions. She needs to bleach 

(that acerbic smell) 

it all out of her head. Coach’s hands, 

(holding hers, cupping her ass, squeezing her mouth shut, holding the gun) 

Beth’s eyes,

(beautiful, furious, betrayed, always on her girl, always, always, always) 

Will’s mouth, 

(cherry bomb, crimson massacre, bloody, toothless, morbid mess) 

all of it. She needs to push it all down and bury it under her ambition, shove it away, shelve it for later. This is Squad Time. 

That’s what she told Beth at Regionals. 

This is Squad Time now. She needs to let everything else go and focus on that. They’re on their way to States! 

Practice makes perfect and perfection is Addy’s ticket out of here. 

* * *

It’s almost dusk but instead of going home, Addy finds herself sitting on the bleachers she’s run endless laps up and down, up and down. Beth is beside her as she can be counted on to be, lighting up a joint. The setting sun is a wound in the sky, weeping blood into the cotton ball clouds. 

Addy is irresistibly reminded of Sarge Will’s mouth and shudders. 

Will she ever experience another day of her life without being reminded of the worst thing she has ever seen, the worst thing she has ever known? 

“So,” Beth cuts through her macabre reverie, “have you broke it off with Sutton Grove’s own Catherine Tramell?” 

“I haven’t seen much of her other than at practice,” Addy answers, a gnawing anxiety growing inside her. “It’s been harder to get together since Mr. Coach came back.” 

“But you are going to break it off when you get a chance, right?”

Addy plucks the joint from Beth’s fingers and takes a hit in lieu of reply. 

“Well, that means no,” Beth huffs, almost affronted. 

“I told you already.” Addy blows out the smoke. “It’ll look bad if I do. Besides, there’s things I want to talk to her about.” 

“Don’t do too much talking,” Beth warns. “If she really did kill Will, you could be next on her hit list if she thinks you know too much. It’s bad enough that you were there.” 

“…what did you say?” Addy’s breath halts. 

“I know you were there,” Beth says, low and somber. “At the sarge’s, the night he died. I told you I don’t sleep. I see everything. That night, what I saw was your garage door. Wide open, empty spot where your car should’ve been at two o’ clock in the morning. You weren’t home, so you must’ve been there. With her.” 

“Oh my god, Beth, now you’re stalking me!?” Addy snaps to a stand, the joint falling from her hands and bouncing against the aluminum seat of the bleacher. 

“No,” Beth argues sharply, standing too. “I’m looking out for you! Someone has to, that cougar’s got her claws into you so goddamn deep!” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Addy snaps, fury sprouting in her chest. 

“I know exactly what I’m talking about! Colette French, controlling everything you do like you're her marionette, using you, abusing you, raping you!” Beth throws her arms wide open. 

“Whoa, whoa, don’t—“ something hot and thick jumps into Addy’s throat and she spits it out. “Coach hasn’t done anything I didn’t want her to do! Beth, I need her, I want to be with her!” 

“That’s the problem! You're infatuated with her, so you don’t see it happening, Addy, but I do!” Beth is yelling but she sounds more like she’s crying, eyes glistening in the glow of dying sun. “She’s using those feelings against you, to keep you on her leash! You have no power in that fucked up thing she’s deluded you into thinking is a relationship!” 

“She makes me happy, Beth,” Addy gasps, exasperated. “I care about her!” 

“You are scared of her!” Beth protests in a lioness roar.

“Because of the things you’ve been saying, the stuff you’ve been putting in my head!”

“No, Addy, because she fucking killed someone!” 

“We don’t know that.” Addy hops to the next bleacher down, tongue nervously swiping over her lips, once twice, a third time. “Maybe you’re the one I need to be scared of. You’re the one stalking me.” 

Addy whirls around before Beth can argue and races down the bleachers like she’s done a thousand times before. This time she doesn’t turn around to do it again. She runs and runs until she can’t run anymore, the sunset bleeding above her, air burning in her lungs, tears slick against her cheeks. 

Beth said Addy didn’t have any power in her and Coach’s relationship, but she simply can’t believe it’s true. Addy does have power. Coach gave her the power to be the best cheerleader she can be. That's all the power she needs.

No, this isn’t just about cheer anymore, but cheer remains at the center of it and that’s the part Beth just doesn’t understand. Could never understand. Beth's family is rich, she is a flyer, the star of the squad. She could go anywhere in the world she wants to go.

Beth doesn’t need to go to college but if she wants it, any of them will accept her. Beth could take Bert’s money and be on the next flight out of here to fucking Fiji, if she wanted to be. But Addy doesn’t think she wants to leave at all. She thinks Beth thrives on being a big fish in this small pond.

Beth doesn’t need Coach like Addy does. Addy needs Coach to get out of Sutton Grove, Addy needs Coach to transform her into what she has to be. Coach is willing to do it because she cares about Addy. 

(right?) 

There are so many things. 

(that don’t add up)

She needs Coach’s help with. 

* * *

  
In Coach’s office, under Coach's desk, Addy gets on her knees. She buries her face between Coach’s legs. There are things they need to talk about, but even though sex isn't the release it used to be, it is still easier than talking. As much as she doesn’t want to admit it, what Beth said was true. A little bit of it, anyway. 

The part where Addy is worried that saying the wrong thing in front of Coach might turn her into a target. There is a conversation that they have to have. There are things Addy simply must know, things she can’t go on much longer not knowing. 

But she is afraid, both for her safety and of disturbing this special thing between them. Of the things she may learn that will shatter whatever stability she has left.

So instead of talking, she takes comfort in the routine of this. Pleasing Coach with her tongue. Coach’s hand in her hair, the familiar pain in her scalp when Coach pulls, this pain that feels like praise, somehow. Probably because it’s almost always followed up by— 

“You’re so good, Addy. So, unnh….” 

Ah, there it is. 

* * *

“What happened to us, Addy?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You do. I want to blame it all on her, but it’s not. It started happening before she even got here. Me losing my girl, piece by piece.” Beth wilts against the locker room wall like a dying flower. “She just showed up and sucked the rest of you away like a fucking tornado.” 

“I just…can’t give you what you want from me, Beth.” Addy peeks at Beth’s profile from the corner of her eye, sees she’s topless. 

Shifts her eyes to the ground and trains them there so that she isn’t tempted to do the things that she might do, if they were different people somewhere else and Addy didn’t have a date in the forest where no one will be there to stop Coach if she is dangerous as Beth seems certain she is and Addy hopes with all her heart isn't, actually. 

She doesn’t truly want to go to Lanvers. But she is even more afraid of what will happen if she dares to defy, if a refusal would glean suspicion from Coach that she cannot afford. 

* * *

  
Coach spreads a picnic blanket across the grass. Inside the picnic basket she places upon it, there are apple slices, cheese, crackers, and wine. They haven’t been able to do this in a few weeks. Between Matt French’s return and the whole town on high alert because of Will’s murder. 

“We have to talk about it,” Addy says softly, “about him.” 

“I know,” Coach admits. “But there’s something I need to tell you first.” 

She reaches over and takes Addy’s hand in hers, gently rolls her thumb over the beginning of Addy’s wrist. Addy looks down at their hands, then up into Coach’s eyes. So haunted, so soulful. 

“I love you, Addy,” she says so softly, voice like the mist of a mid-spring rain. “I really love you. What we have isn’t just sex. Not just some saucy, forbidden tryst to keep us entertained in this bumfuck nowhere town. It’s real. At least, it is to me…” 

Addy’s heart pounds harder, so hard she feels it might explode from her chest like something out of a sci-fi movie. Her breath catches in her throat as warmth floods her stomach. 

“Really?” 

“Yes.” A pretty smile curls Coach’s lips, but it wobbles, begins to fade. “Don't you love me?” 

“Y-Yeah,” Addy answers, nebulous, knowing it was true once, but unsure now. Of love, of Coach, of everything. 

Is she holding the hand that picked up the gun? That put it to Will’s mouth? 

“Of course I love you,” she says not because she feels it, but because it feels like the right response. 

Coach leans in and covers Addy’s lips with her own, a slow, warm kiss. Addy could melt in it forever, were she not worried these were a murderer’s lips, a murderer whose potential victim was her last lover, at that. She slides her lips away and lets go of Coach’s hand. 

“I love you,” Addy repeats. “But I still need answers.” 

“Right.” Coach bobs her head, agreeable. 

“Will’s death wasn’t a suicide.” This is not a question. “Do you know what happened to him?” 

Coach draws in a sharp breath and nods at this too, gaze firmly fixed upon Addy’s. 

“It wasn’t me. I need you to believe me, Addy, I would never hurt Will.” 

“I want to believe that,” Addy says, even as something ugly emerges from the depths of her stomach and crawls its way into her mouth. 

Coach grasps her hand again. “If I tell you what happened to Will, Addy, you must never tell a soul. If you really love me, you will keep this secret until the day you die.” 

Her choice of words sends chills up Addy’s spine but Addy nods anyway. She has no choice but to nod and know. 

“Matt found out about my affair with Will,” each word leaves Coach’s lips like rocks that won’t skip, too heavy pebbles that sink to the bottom of the water every single time. “I’d taken Will’s gun because of all the scary things he’d been saying to me. Matt found it and followed me to Will’s apartment. They had a confrontation and…” 

“Bang,” Addy finishes for her, that ugliness, whatever it may be, sinking its teeth into the meat of her heart. 

“He didn’t mean to,” Coach continues, voice raw with pain. “But whether he meant to or not, Will is still dead.” 

For a moment, Addy is quiet. She is relieved that it wasn’t Coach. That the person in love with her, the person she needs the most right now, is not a murderer. There are still a few things she doesn’t understand. 

“Why are you covering for him?” Addy asks. 

“Oh, Addy, don’t you know?” Coach tips her head to the side. “You grew up without a father. You know how hard it is, to have that missing piece in your life, that ache that nothing else can fill.” Coach places her other hand against Addy’s cheek, thumb stroking so softly beneath her eye. 

“I don’t want that for Caitlin,” she murmurs, so close her breath fans warm over Addy’s face. “I don’t want to take my daughter’s father away from her.” 

It’s been so long that Addy barely feels the ache anymore, the longing. But she does remember the time that she did feel it, back in elementary when her mother did her hair in thick braids held together by big, colorful beads that clacked together if she shook her head really fast. When she was still young enough to foolishly hope that he would come back someday and she made up stories about the bigger and better things he was doing so far away, and Beth would listen to each one, rapt by Addy’s voice. 

“But if he explained that it was an accident to the cops, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad,” Addy says thoughtfully. 

“That’s wishful thinking,” Coach declares. “Too wishful.” 

“You’re probably right,” Addy admits, leaning into Coach’s touch and hoping to find comfort that she doesn’t quite, actually. 

“I know I’m right,” Coach says, bobbing her head decisively. “You’ve got to trust me, Addy. I have a little more world experience.” 

Of that, she’s fully aware. 

“I won’t tell,” she swears. “I’ll never tell anyone anything, but if Matt found about Will, doesn’t that mean he could find out about us?” 

_Doesn’t that mean he could hurt me?_

Addy doesn’t dare let the second horrible thought touch the air, should it become some kind of curse if she does. 

“No,” Coach says. “Look at me. I don’t want you to worry about that. I will never let that happen.” 

But it already happened once. Addy swallows, trying to keep calm as dreadful, eerie sensation climbs her spine rung by rung. 

“We are careful, Addy,” Coach says firmly. “We’re both very careful. And you and I have excuses to be together that Will and I didn’t have. No one would bat an eye if we told them that you come to me for extra practice, or that sometimes I need you to babysit my daughter. Besides, Matt…Matt is many things, but he’s not bright. He didn’t find out about Will and I by himself.” 

Addy blinks rapidly in surprise. “Wait, someone told him?” 

Now Coach’s eyes narrow, slitted and steely. “Someone sent him a video.” 

“Beth,” Addy realizes immediately, cold washing through her. “Oh my god. Beth.” 

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, one more part after this part, which I plan to take a different route than both the series and the book. Then this particular, niche AU I created somewhat accidentally will be over...but again, it won't be my last Dare Me fic. I'll still write more Dare Me, just not in this collection.
> 
> Edit: Fixed some typos and awkwardly worded language.


End file.
